Mountains We Haven't Climbed
by gothicorca1895
Summary: Turbo has defeated the incarnation of his evil former self, become a part of the family of his former worst enemies, and even overcome his own glitchy code. Now he'll finally live happily ever after without any more misadventures, right? ...is it EVER that simple? Drabblefic sequel to Ghost Boy. Chapter 4: What was it like when Turbo and the malware were still the same person?
1. Press start

_A/N - Hello, everybody! I'm finally ready to begin the drabblefic sequel to Ghost Boy! And for those of you who haven't actually read Ghost Boy, well, you kind of need to in order to understand this. Sorry, but it's very steeply based in my headcanon, and you will get confused very quickly if you don't have all the background._

_Anyway, let me explain how this will work. Every chapter of this story will be a mostly self-contained oneshot detailing an event that takes place after Ghost Boy. Think of all the little stories as a TV series: they've got their own arcs and they're slightly episodic, but in their own way, they all come together to form one continuing plotline. Why am I doing it like this instead of just writing a straight-up sequel? Because I had a ton of ideas for what could happen after the ending of Ghost Boy, so many that there was no way they'd fit into a traditional plot structure! So here, you lucky readers get to have basically the ongoing adventures of Turbo and Vanellope. And yes, this is still mostly about Turbo. The other characters will all get their time in the spotlight at one point or another, but I know how much everybody (including me) loves them some Turbo._

_A few more things to take note of:_

_1. Occasionally, I might write a oneshot that takes place before or during Ghost Boy. I'll always make sure to warn about this in an AN ahead of time, that way nobody gets confused.  
2. There also might be two-, three-, or even four-part "episodes" sometimes. These will be clearly marked with "Part 1," "Part 2," and so on.  
3. This fic will be updated sporadically, as quickly or as slowly as I feel like.  
4. The length of each chapter will vary. This particular story happens to be pretty long, about the length of a chapter of Ghost Boy, but that doesn't mean that future updates won't be shorter._

_And I think that's about it! Now, sit back, relax, and enjoy the first drabble in the "Mountains We Haven't Climbed" series...which, by popular demand, is the story of Turbo's first Random Roster Race!_

…

_Press start_

…

The track was set; the crowds were cheering; the racers had suited up in their protective gear and now waited on baited breath in the drivers' seats of their karts, tensed with anticipation for the upcoming event. On any normal day, the board would be displaying fifteen names, those of every possible avatar in Sugar Rush preparing to compete for the top nine slots. But today was far from normal. There were sixteen characters listed today, and underneath Adorabeezle Winterpop and Jubileena Bing-Bing and Vanellope von Schweetz was a name that was much shorter and simpler than any other: Turbo.

Vanellope had made a joke about how that wasn't right, it should really say Pajama Boy, but Turbo had been so thrilled after depositing his entry fee that he hadn't even used his own snide nickname for her, glitter-graphics. He had only attempted to enter the daily Random Roster Race once before, and that occasion had ended in disaster when he'd inadvertently triggered King Candy's name appearing on the board. And from there, he'd been forced to cope with the memories that had been deleted for his own good, including a sort of terrifying reenactment not long after...but that was all over now, he reminded himself. No more King Candy. No more scary things. His code was his own again, and he had his chance to be a real racer, and the past month of hard work wasn't going to go to waste, and he was on the board. He was on the board. _He_ was on the board, his own name, not King Candy's.

"I can do it," the fifteen-year-old murmured in reassurance to himself, tightening his grip on the steering wheel. "I'm Turbo, the greatest racer ever. And I'm gonna win."

Technically he didn't even need to get first place to be a real racer again; any spot in ninth place or above would do. But receiving such a low rank would have been unacceptable to Turbo's pride. In his home game, even coming in third had once enraged him, although of course there had only been three racers back in Turbo Time. Truthfully, he had never raced with fifteen other people before, nor had he ever driven on a track as complex as this during his past few weeks in Sugar Rush (Royal Raceway was supposed to be the most difficult course in the entire game, and judging by the few races here that he had witnessed, that was an accurate description). But he was still going to win, if for no other reason than he needed some gold coins and would prefer not to keep borrowing them from other people.

Besides, he knew how to drive, and more importantly, he knew how to glitch.

Static was building up beneath the surface of his character model, pressing against his skin in a way that would cause him to bubble into pixels and binary code if he allowed it to get free, but he kept the lurking glitches under control. He wasn't in the least bit surprised that his coding was on the fritz. He had expected it, since he was so excited that he could hardly keep from bouncing out of the kart and running the race on his own power, and yet he forced himself to sit still and draw in deep breaths. Under control. Under control. Real racers couldn't glitch involuntarily on the track. He had this under control...

His attention was only drawn away when Vanellope angled her head to smirk at him. Since she was the ruler and lead character of the game, her kart was positioned front and center at the starting line, and she had insisted that his vehicle had to be situated right next to hers. He had been a tad nervous about bumping someone out of their normal spot next to the president, but no one had called him out on this so far. "Are you ready to do this thing?" she asked, bouncing in her seat slightly. Her hazel eyes glimmered at the prospect of finally racing with her new best friend.

In response, Turbo tapped his toe against the gas pedal of his car. He was still holding it steady with the clutch, so this action did nothing but produce a revving noise, which spoke volumes on its own. Vanellope secured her hot-pink goggles over her face with one swift tug and stood up.

"_Is everybody ready?!_" she called, her voice soaring above the din of the spectators. This was her customary way of kickstarting the daily qualifying race.

"YES!" shouted the fourteen other official Sugar Rush avatars.

"_Are you SURE you guys are ready?!"_

"_YES!" _hollered Turbo at the top of his lungs, the excitement of his current situation finally absorbing into his mind, and his voice was quickly engulfed in the cacophony of the crowd bellowing their responses and his opponents kickstarting their engines.

Vanellope flipped her ponytail dramatically as she plopped back down in her seat, her hands scuttling towards the controls of her kart. "_THEN LET THE RANDOM ROSTER RACE COMMENCE!"_

A momentary hush swept across the Royal Raceway.

Several quick, agile NPCs with the appearances of floating marshmallows swooped down, some of them activating various controls for the jumbotrons, others performing a final sweep of the starting line. But the one that everybody had focused on was the marshmallow lugging around a traffic light. Every racer's eyes were fixated on the red glow emanating from the instrument, awaiting its metamorphosis into yellow and then green.

And at last, the numbers began to zoom through the air overhead.

_3..._

This was it. This was really happening, and it was happening _now_. Turbo swallowed and ensured that he had a decent grip on his gearshift.

_2..._

His sneakered foot lifted slightly, ready for him to transfer it from the brake to the gas at a moment's notice.

_1_...

He was really going to do this! He clenched all over as he restrained another glitch, his heart beating out a rhythm of excitement, delight, anxiety, and all-around adrenaline against his ribcage. The only thing standing between him and a real role in this game was fifteen other competitors...

_GO!_

That was the magic word, and it ignited an automatic reaction embedded deep within Turbo's programming. Without another thought, he stomped on the gas pedal as hard as he possibly could, flooring it as he tore past the starting line in order to collect speed. Acceleration was his kart's lowest statistic, but he knew that as soon as he really got going, he would be nearly impossible to stop. He allowed a breath to billow out of him, and his thoughts and inhibitions and preoccupations seemed to drop away from his mind, replaced by a single command repeated in a persistent chant:

_Race, race, race, race._

_Don't think, just react, _he told himself. _Just race. Let the programming take over. _Even if he had never driven on this particular course before, and even if he was more accustomed to competing with one or two other people as opposed to fifteen, this was the very task that he had been created for. He was absolutely capable of winning here. After all, he was the greatest racer ever...wasn't he?

The first section of the Royal Raceway, just beyond the bleachers, was Sugar Square. This was where things first started to heat up, and the pack of karts began to lose its unified formation, with some racers noticeably falling behind while others charged to the front. Two cars swerved in front of Turbo, triggering an automatic knee-jerk, _how-dare-they _reaction, but he steadied his shoulders and reassured himself that everything would be fine, the race had only just begun and he had plenty of time to get ahead. Even if he wasn't nearly as much of a jerk as he'd been thirty years ago, his competitiveness didn't seem to have been quelled by the decades at all.

He zoomed past buildings and little houses and sentient candies, all blurring into stripes of pinkish-crimson and brownish-red at the corners of his vision, and finally came up to the ramp that would deposit him into an area free of spectators: Gumball Gorge. It was one of the most dangerous sections of any track, he knew, and it would require timing, observation, and just a pinch of luck in order to safely make it through. At least he knew that he'd regenerate if something should happen to him...supposedly. He was still practically right next to Vanellope as he dropped off of the apex of the ramp, his stomach descending proportionally (after his little misadventure in Hero's Duty a few days ago, he rather suspected that he would be fearful of heights forevermore) until his wheels made contact with the track once again.

Now it was time to take things up a notch.

Gumballs as large as boulders weaved in holding patterns along the red-marbled sides of the canyon, dropping from the towering candy dispensers overhead in an endless avalanche. Several racers, both to the front and the rear of the back, found themselves being bowled over by the oversized sweets. Vanellope expertly zipped from side to side to avoid them, teleporting in a flash of blue when one got a bit too close to her for comfort. Turbo gritted his teeth, unwilling to let her get so far ahead of him, and shifted his kart into a higher gear.

There was a line of powerup cubes just ahead of him, and after a quick check to ensure that there were no gumballs imminent, he darted down to snag one. Sugary glitter fizzled in the air around him.

Out of nowhere, the hood of his vehicle retracted and allowed a comically oversized blaster contraption to spring out, and a button on his dashboard lit up with a small picture of three gumballs. He had received Sweet Seekers, one of his favorite items. Oh, he'd had so much fun slamming Vanellope with these during their practice races...he used a joystick on his console to take aim at the avatars closest to him and jammed his thumb down on the button, one, two, three times.

_BAM! _Gloyd Orangeboar was spinning to the side; _BAM! _There went Jubileena Bing-Bing; _BAM!_ Good-bye, Sticky Wipplesnit. Turbo dodged the last of the falling gumballs and pulled up beside Vanellope smoothly, a smirk now creeping up on his face. The pint-sized president spotted him in her rearview mirror and shouted, "Sharp shooting, Pajama Boy! Too bad _I'm _still here!" With that taunt still lingering in the air, she yanked to the side in order to roll across a series of speed-boost arrows. Turbo followed her lead, and the two of them arced out of Gumball Gorge and landed on the next section of the course.

_Seriously, what is up with all of the flying off edges here?!_ Turbo wondered, slightly jittery as he returned to solid ground. Lucky for him, he hadn't glitched once. He had no way of knowing what rank he was currently in, but as far as he could tell, there were only five or six racers ahead of him including Vanellope. He was doing pretty good for his first Random Roster Race, but "pretty good" wasn't enough for the greatest racer ever. He shifted gears again, drawing much closer to everyone else. It was time to get into the pack and start some slick maneuvering.

They were now circling a giant decorated birthday cake, lined with cherries that could become dangerous explosives at a moment's notice if Candlehead decided to stray towards the edge. Being alert was now more important than ever. He was so focused on keeping his wheel jerked to the side and passing the people in front of him that when something rammed into the side of his kart, he couldn't help but crackle with an involuntary glitch of shock. His first impossible, fleeting thought was, _King Candy!_ But of course that was riddiculous. It was Rancis Fluggerbutter in his peanut butter cup car, trying to knock Turbo off-course. The cherubic-faced boy was grinning not unkindly, as if to assure Turbo that this was all in the spirit of friendly competition.

Turbo blinked several times to clear his head before sticking his nose up at Rancis teasingly, then pulling ahead of the chocolatey kid. He was more shaken up then he was letting on, though – how could he have let his imagination get the better of him that way?! – and another unintentional ripple of red pixels spread through him. This did not escape the notice of the racer just ahead of him, who unfortunately happened to be Taffyta Muttonfudge.

"Glitch!" she called back at him disdainfully, her eyes narrowed and unimpressed behind the visor of her strawberry helmet.

Under his breath, he inaudibly muttered a word that would have gotten him in a lot of trouble with the grown-ups if they'd heard him, one that rhymed with _glitch _and wasn't considered appropriate in polite company. To her face, he shouted, "Gee, Taffyta, if I didn't know any better, I'd say that you didn't like me very much!" More than anyone else, the pink pansy really seemed to have it out for him.

Taffyta sniffed. "Why don't you just get out of my sight!"

"Oh..._gladly_," he responded, quietly enough that she probably couldn't hear him. If she was going to call him a glitch, then he'd show her some glitching, all right.

He drew in a deep breath and forced himself to disperse into glowing scarlet particles. When he reassembled a second later, he was in front of Taffyta (and Candlehead and Adorabeezle Winterpop, who had both been very close by). "Turbo-Tastic!" he yelled at Taffyta's mortified face, briefly removing one hand from the wheel to flash her the thumbs-up and broadening his grin. To his surprise and delight, all of the other nearby children began practically howling with laughter at this, especially Vanellope, who was once again nearly right next to Turbo.

"Take this part fast!" she called over her shoulder to him as they swirled around the top of the birthday cake and into a tunnel. Turbo obeyed, applying as much pressure to his gas pedal as possible and shifting one more time to reach his highest gear...

And suddenly the road vanished beneath him.

"What the _whaaaaaaat_?!" he cried, his voice stretching out into a half-scream.

For what felt like a small eternity, he was soaring through the air, arching towards the next section of the track in a manner that seemed much more like flying than falling. All right, _this_ was definitely a new one for him, and he was torn between laughing in joy at the sensation of freely traveling across the sky like this or trying to choke back the glitches and nausea spurned by his newly supplemented fear of heights. Vanellope was shrieking, too, but for her it was more like the reaction she might have to going over the biggest hill on a roller coaster. Finally, Turbo's vehicle bounced slightly as it reconnected with the ground, and he found himself swerving as he readjusted to driving on a solid surface.

Vanellope glanced back at him again, her cheeks flushed with excitement. "Don't worry, Pajama Boy, you're doing great!" she yelled. He offered her a shaky smile in response, his eyes still wide and slightly stunned behind their protective goggles, before returning his attention to the road.

He was now fairly certain that there were only three people ahead of him: Vanellope (of course), Snowanna Rainbeau, and Crumbelina di Caramello. As they approached another line of item boxes, Crumbelina was granted an A La Mode powerup and spun around with the intent of firing it at him, but he glitched away before the colossal ice cream scoop could smother him. This turn of events reinforced his confidence; he had never been able to react this quickly with his glitches before! He was so intent on utilizing his newfound ability that when he teleported past Snowanna, it took him completely by surprise when a slight dizzy spell struck him like a pebble between the eyes.

Oh, right. Glitching was not an unlimited power, for him anyway. Vanellope, who had been doing some glitching of her own, must have noticed him trying to blink off his disorientation, because she peered over her shoulder with concern knit into her brow. "Don't tire yourself out, Turbo," she warned.

"I won't," he promised. Now that they were clear of Crumbelina and Snowanna, the only person he had left to overtake was her, and he had done it plenty of times during their leisure races over the past month. He didn't need his glitch to win this thing, which was just as well, because he was fairly certain that he'd glitched himself out for today...and maybe second place would be acceptable once he'd done this a few more times, but today, he wouldn't settle for anything less than first.

The two of them zipped along, hugging the curves in the road, and white flecks began to speckle the lenses of Turbo's goggles after a short while. At first he thought that it was snowing, but then he realized what he was actually looking at: powdered sugar. They had come to the Ice Cream Mountains.

He squinted, abruptly overcome with a sense of malaise. There was something familiar about this place, and not just because he had seen Vanellope pass through here when he'd come to watch her competing in qualifying races. For whatever reason, this particular location was linked in his mind to anger, desperation, the fearful guilt of a lie being revealed at last...

It was only with an effort that he kept his focus as he trailed Vanellope into the dark labyrinth of caves that awaited them. He was jolted out of his uneasiness somewhat when the rainbow belt track plummeted almost vertically downwards (as he took the plunge, he once again reminded himself that he would regenerate in this game) but as he bolted through stalactite and stalagmite formations at top speed, distress percolated his penchant for racing more and more –

"_Get off of my track!"_

"_Hey! What are you, crazy?!"_

He stiffened immediately as understanding slammed into him: of course this place looked familiar. He had been here before.

"_I forbid you to cross that finish line!"_

"_Aah! Knock it off!"_

Turbo sucked in a wheezing gasp, his vision blurring as the fragmented memories assaulted him. Barely identifiable disruptions flashed before his eyes...him in his King Candy disguise, swinging a rod down at Vanellope...Vanellope recoiling from him in terror...his own stunned and distorted face as he realized that his saccharine covering had been disabled...A shuddering glitch rolled through him.

"Turbo?!"

"_I'm not letting you undo all my hard work!"_

"Hey, 'Bo, come on!"

"_I'm Turbo, the greatest racer ever! And I did not reprogram this world to let you and that halitosis-riddled warthog take it away from m – "_

"TURBO! Snap out of it!"

Turbo clenched his teeth and momentarily squeezed his eyes shut, shaking his head rapidly. With some difficulty, he wrenched his brain out of the past. All he was seeing were flashbacks, the last remnants of King Candy's memories before they had been erased completely, a trick of his own mind. It was done and over with now. There was no more King Candy, just him, and he was here to prove himself!

Suddenly acknowledging how close to the edge of the road he had veered, he guided his kart back towards the middle of the track and planted his foot back down on the accelerator, his glitches ceasing and his eyes returning to their normal determined expression.

Vanellope, who hadn't gotten too far ahead, beamed back at him. "That's the Pajama Boy I know!" she declared.

"I've got it, I've got it!" His pale fingers curled around the steering wheel almost defensively. "Now let's finish this race!"

They sped back out into the sunlit domain of Sugar Rush's aboveground world, neck and neck, first and second place.

They had reached the very last stretch of the course, and the grandstands and finish line were visible in the distance, drawing closer all the time. Vanellope and Turbo weaved around each other in an intricate display of driving know-how, drawing _oohs_ and _aaahs_ from the crowd that were only slightly muffled by distance. It was so easy to pretend that they were involved in one of the noncompetitive races that they'd done in glitch training, with the rest of the competitors far behind them and nothing but a flat expanse of packed cocoa dirt ahead. Try as he might, he just couldn't seem to pull in front of her; she matched each of his skillful maneuvers with some of her own, so that neither of them made any headway. It wasn't that he wanted her to just let him pass or anything, but...he _had_ to win this race, he just _had_ to!

A strategy occurred to him then. However, his timing would have to be exactly perfect in order to make it work. One second too early and he would spin out, losing his chances of winning and possibly even descending past the top nine; one second too late and Vanellope would have already crossed the finish line. It would be tricky, but he could do this. He was in control. He was the greatest racer ever, and...

Turbo stopped swerving and positioned himself directly behind Vanellope, so close that his bumper was practically nuzzling her tailpipe. He silently ticked off a string of numbers in his head, counting down, five, four, three, two, ONE –

He sucked in a deep breath, silently chanted to himself that he was in control, and forced himself to glitch.

The dizzy spell slammed into him as soon as his pixels had reassembled, and he gasped, his foot frantically scrabbling for the brake as his kart spiraled across the finish line. Somehow, he managed to twist the steering wheel in such a way that he reached the sidelines of the track, and he sat there massaging his temples, willing the bout of lightheadedness to retreat. It was several long minutes before the ecstatic cheers of the spectators penetrated his ears.

Vanellope had skidded to a halt a few feet away, and when he turned in his feet to face her, he saw that her mouth was stretching open in astonishment. "_Turbo!" _she exclaimed.

"What...huh? Did I win?" he asked, finally standing up to get a better view of the jumbotron.

There was the list of sixteen racers on the big screen, containing all of the same names that it had before, although now rearranged to reflect their current rankings. Small checkered flag symbols appeared next to each icon as the racers crossed the finish line, one by one. His eyes crawled up the column. Fourth place, Adorabeezle Winterpop...third place, Snowanna Rainbeau...second place, Vanellope von Schweetz...and in first place was...

"I...I won?" Turbo blinked, and all of a sudden, he was unable to prevent the enormous yellow-toothed smile from spreading across his ghostly white face. "I won! _I won! _Turbo-Tastic!"

Vanellope leapt out of her kart and zipped over to him in a burst of cerulean binary, laughing all the way. She swept him up in a hug. "You did it, 'Bo! I always knew you had it in ya! You're finally gonna be a real racer again!"

"Turbo-Tastic!" he repeated emphatically, and she fell back laughing.

In the Assorted Fans section, Felix, Calhoun, and Ralph were cheering loudest of all. Felix was so excited that he propelled himself into the air with a platformer's leap, Calhoun was grinning and nodding and undoubtedly impressed with the victor, and Ralph slapped his massive hands together and hollered, "Way to go, kid!" Turbo's happiness multiplied by a hundredfold when he saw that he had made them proud, and he bounced on his feet, waving at them with vigor. He would never have gotten anywhere near this far if it wasn't for them.

And he _certainly_ wouldn't have been able to pull out that win if it hadn't been for Vanellope's help.

Turbo trotted over to the podium, and for the first time that he could remember since losing his own game, he took his place on the highest tier. Vanellope awarded the bronze medal to Snowanna, looped the silver medal around her neck, and then hoisted a golden trophy brimming with royal tokens into Turbo's arms, grinning broadly the entire time. He breathed out in amazement as he accepted the award. It was a little larger than he had expected, and it appeared to be constructed out of butterscotch hard candy instead of metal, but none of that mattered. This trophy represented his first true win in Sugar Rush, his first time becoming a part of the roster, and most importantly, all of the hard work and strife that he had endured in order to get to this point.

He would never forget what he'd gone through in order to get here. From now on, every win would mean more to him than just another chance for praise and adulation.

"Thanks, Vanny," he said, smiling down at her from his perch.

"No problem, 'Bo," she answered. "You earned it, after all!"

"I never could have done it without you."

"Well, it took you long enough to finally get that glitch under control, but you did it!" She reached up and squeezed his hand. "Oh, this is so exciting! We're going to be racing together all the time! The gamers will love ya – they always think that the easter eggs from retro games are super cool! You're going to get picked so many times tomorrow!"

His eyes sparkled at the thought of what would come in the morning. It had been so long...so long since he'd been more than an outsider, hiding in the fringes of this game until he was ready to be revealed to the masses...

"Just remember to be careful with your glitch, okay?" she finished. "We don't want you to faint on the track!"

"I just hope that the gamers will be careful with it tomorrow!" he proclaimed. Wow, this was a new one for all of them – a glitch who _wasn't _secretly royalty getting the chance to legitimately race...

When Turbo arrived home at the castle, he borrowed a penknife from Sergeant Calhoun and scratched an engraving into the back of his trophy. It was much more difficult than he thought it would be, and in the end, he settled on an extremely short inscription: _Vanny and Bo first RRR. _Then he placed the golden cup front and center atop his wardrobe, having to stretch on tiptoes a bit to reach that high, where it would be visible from nearly everywhere in his bedroom.

In the days, weeks, and eventually months to come, he would accumulate many more like it, as well as a whole host of second- and third-place medals, and it wasn't long before he would completely give up trying to keep track of which race had resulted in which award. But that first trophy would always stand out. It was special, and if he ever started feeling frustrated or dissatisfied and needed a reminder of how far he had come, he could take it down from its spot and run his fingers over the letters carved into the back. Doing this always seemed to restore him to the peaceful state of mind he'd been in after that very first Random Roster Race, and he would remember that he should be happy just to be here.

It wasn't about the trophies. It wasn't about winning first place. It was about being in a place where he was useful, and needed, and where he had a home and a family to come back to whenever the races got rough. And at the end of the day, he wouldn't have sacrificed that for all of the attention in the world.


	2. Chews your racer

…

Chews your racer

…

"_This is it! This is really happening! I almost don't believe it, I mean, I've been waiting for this moment for so long and now – ! What if something goes wrong?! What if I glitch and put the game out of order?! Or what if the gamers just don't like me anymore?!"_

"_Hey, come on, don't think like that! Those people are gonna love you!"_

"_But...won't they see me and know I don't belong in this game? I mean, I look...weird!"_

"_Of course you look weird! That'll make the gamers want to play as you even more 'cause they'll be interested with how weird you look!"_

_"..."_

"_Now, let's go, Pajama Boy! The arcade's gonna open in five minutes! Strike a pose, 'cause this is it – you're ready for the roster!"_

…

Saturday had always been the busiest day of the week for Stanley Litwak, who considered the increased population of his arcade over the weekend as both a blessing and a curse. It was great for business, obviously, and he never would have stuck with his "Family Fun Center" for this long if he didn't enjoy spending time around children. But after eight hours of the youngins running from console to console and shrieking and blasting and racing and who knew what else, who could blame him for feeling exhaustion settle into his old bones? There was a reason why he closed early on Sundays.

On this particular Saturday morning, he was proceeding through his preparation rituals for the normal 9 AM opening, stopping once to wistfully stare at the patch of empty discolored carpet next to Pac-Man. Fix-It Felix Jr. had stood there proudly for more than thirty years before the console screen had finally flickered out. It was a shame, really; that had been one of the first cabinets that Mr. Litwak had ever acquired, and one of his personal favorites, so much so that he hadn't been able to part with it. It was currently located in a sad, dusty corner of his garage, awaiting the day when he would either be forced to discard it or else find someone able to make the necessary repairs without damaging it. He was still holding out hope that he could return it to the arcade someday. "After all, the software was still working just fine," he muttered. "There has to be someone who can fix the screen without busting it. And there's so few of those original cabinets left in the world, I'd hate to just throw it out...maybe if I ever had to get rid of it, I could sell it to a museum or somethin'..."

Ah, but he was rambling on to himself now. Well, people always got to be a little cuckoo when they reached his age.

Mr. Litwak unlocked the doors and welcomed in the initial flow of customers. At this time of the morning, most of the kids were the avid gamers, the regular fixtures in the arcade. They dissipated and headed to their usual stations, and he absently began to patrol the aisles, eyes peeled for any disputes turning less-than-friendly or any games not functioning as they should. The arcade hadn't even been open for five minutes when he noticed some sort of a commotion around the Sugar Rush consoles.

He frowned as he headed over, unsure if something had gotten broken or someone was arguing about who would get to play first or what. A girl and a boy had apparently inserted their quarters and taken their seats at the controls, but several other various children had grouped around them, squinting and pointing at the screens. "Is everything all right over here, kids?" he questioned, approaching without any idea of what to expect.

The girl turned around, and he recognized her as one of his normal weekend patrons, Molly, by her pink-rimmed glasses. "Mr. Litwak, did you install an upgrade to Sugar Rush or something?" she asked.

"No, not recently." His frown deepened. "Is the game acting up, sweetheart?"

"It's just that there's a new character here that we've never seen before," the boy next to her piped up. "And we're confused because he looks pretty different from the rest of the game...at least, I _think_ it's supposed to be a he."

"Let me take a look." Mr. Litwak adjusted his glasses and leaned in for a better view of Molly's screen.

At first, he didn't see anything abnormal. The Sugar Rush selection screen was divided up into nine colored squares, each one containing a graphic of one of the day's available avatars. Eight of these boxes were occupied by chibi, candy-themed racers, as always. But in the ninth box, bottom center, just beneath Vanellope von Schweetz...

The figure in the square seemed different proportioned from the other characters, and slightly taller, and its body was almost completely white. It was designed to have the appearance of a boy in a red-striped racing jumpsuit, his head encased by a helmet emblazoned with a scarlet capital T. What was strange about him was that his skin was just as chalk-white as his clothing, and his round eyes, which seemed to be peering out at the players with a combination of trepidation and expectancy, were a bizarre shade of lemon yellow that almost seemed to be glowing. But the most extraordinary thing of all was that Mr. Litwak actually knew who the mystery character was.

"Hey, that looks like Turbo!" he exclaimed.

"Turbo?" repeated Molly, wrinkling her nose. "Who's he?"

"I play this game all the time, and I've never heard of a Turbo before," added the boy sitting next to her.

"Back in the day, there was an old racing game called Turbo Time," explained Mr. Litwak. "Nothing fancy compared to what you kids are playing now, but it was pretty popular back then. The main character was Turbo, and wouldn't you know it, this little guy here looks exactly like him." He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Right down to the red T."

Come to think of it, the resemblance was a little uncanny in how exact Turbo's likeness was. Both Sugar Rush and Turbo Time were Tobikomi games, so the character must have been inserted by the developers as a nifty little throwback...but then, why hadn't they altered his design to make him look more like the other Sugar Rush racers? Why hadn't they given him a more natural skin tone besides deathly white, or made his eyes normal but with yellow irises, or something of that nature? It seemed as if they had stayed awfully true to his original design, to the point of slight eeriness. Still, he was right there, clearly rendered in 3D and a playable character, so the way he looked must have been the programmers' choice. There was no other explanation for Turbo being on the roster.

Was there?

Mr. Litwak suddenly had an uncomfortable flash of a certain event that he had tried to expel from his mind. Turbo Time had broken down in 1987, right around the same time that another game, Road Blasters, had also gone on the fritz. And when Road Blasters had malfunctioned, through the static and lines and glitches obscuring the screen, there had still been the visible shape of a certain sprite in a red car with a word balloon declaring, "Turbo-Tastic!"...

"Where did he come from all of a sudden?" demanded one of the kids watching the exchange.

"He must be one of those unlockables," answered Mr. Litwak, shutting out the uncanny imagery as he returned to his senses. "You know, after you play a certain number of games on the machine, he becomes available to use. Like a bonus character!"

"Oh, I get it!" Molly perked right up. "He's an easter egg from the game company! They put a character from an old game into the new one. I've seen that happen before."

Well, good. Perhaps this wasn't such an abnormal situation after all. "Exactly," confirmed Mr. Litwak. "And Turbo Time was a racing game, too, so I guess it only makes sense that Turbo would pop up in Sugar Rush."

"Cool!" proclaimed Molly's partner. "I wanna play as him first!" With that, the boy gave the console's steering wheel a spin, then stomped down on the faux accelerator as the square containing Turbo was illuminated.

For a split second, everything within the game was so entirely still that Mr. Litwak wondered if it had frozen somehow. Then the Turbo avatar's face stretched into a familiar yellow-toothed grin, and he flipped his thumb into the air. "Turbo-Tastic!" shouted a voice from the speakers.

"Yup, that's Turbo all right," said Mr. Litwak softly, his mouth curling into a small, nostalgic smile. Wow, Tobikomi had sure gotten one heckuva voice imitator to speak Turbo's catchphrase.

"No fair, I wanted to try him!" whined Molly, before lifting her shoulders in a shrug. "Oh, well, I guess I'll just play as Vanellope like I usually do." She settled into the seat and gripped the steering wheel.

Mr. Litwak decided to leave the children to their gaming, already aware of a flurry of quarter-claims as other kids competed to get the next try at the new character. He crossed over to the area near Hero's Duty, remembering that huh, funny, there was an "easter egg" in that game as well. A short while after he'd been forced to unplug Fix-It Felix Jr., an updated version of ol' Felix had shown up as a bonus mechanic in the newfangled FPS game. Wasn't that a strange coincidence.

Sometimes, when his mind started wandering, he got around to thinking that the games in his arcade seemed to have a mind of their own. He'd encountered a host of strange errors and unprecedented bonuses practically since day one, and the anomalies only seemed to increase in number as time went by. And while it might give him pause once in a while, he never found any of it upsetting. He could be satisfied entertaining the half-joking notion that at least Felix had found some other work with his game out of commission, and as for Turbo, well, he'd just looked so _happy_ when Molly's friend had chosen him.

"Good for you, little guy," Mr. Litwak sighed under his breath. "Have fun in Sugar Rush."

It was all absolutely absurd, of course. But when you got to be his age, of course you'd end up going a little cuckoo.


	3. Favorites

…

_Favorites_

…

Turbo had officially joined the Sugar Rush roster exactly one week ago today, and since then, he had won his place as a playable avatar every day – never sinking below third place in any Random Roster Race.

It was enough to drive Taffyta Muttonfudge absolutely insane.

Was she the only one who wasn't willing to overlook what he'd done to the game, to the princess, to all of their memories?! King Candy had made fools of them all! Oh, yes, Vanellope had spread her wisdom about how Turbo's personality had been corrupted by malware and add-ons, and how he no longer even remembered his fifteen-year reign as a saccharine dictator, but Taffyta wasn't completely swayed even by the reassurances of her newfound friend. She had seen the racing footage where the king's true colors had been revealed...everyone in Sugar Rush had watched that recording at least once. And she told herself that there was still a shifty look lingering in Turbo's yellow eyes that she didn't like. After all, he'd still gotten two games unplugged, hadn't he?! Why in the world had Vanellope befriended the virus who had utterly ruined her life?!

_Why had she befriended the bully who had led the attacks on her at every opportunity?_

If you had asked Taffyta if she missed King Candy, she would have responded with a prompt and immediate no. After all, the game was prospering both inside and out, it was more popular with the gamers than ever, and she'd somehow managed to forge a firm friendship with the new ruler. But lurking at the back of her mind was an unpleasant fact that could be denied and ignored, but never forgotten.

She was King Candy's favorite.

Or she had been, anyway. Every racer in Sugar Rush had been created as a nine-year-old child, and they were all programmed parentless. It wasn't a big deal; you couldn't miss the adults that had never been in your life, after all, and for the most part they could fend for themselves and each other. But Taffyta had always known of one grown-up who was willing to guide her when she hit a particularly tough snag.

King Candy had never spoken of favoring any one racer. They were all on supposedly equal grounds with him – well, except for the _glitch_, and she wasn't hardly a proper racer, was she? And yet Taffyta had known that she was his favorite all the same. It was all laid out for her to see, in his manner of speaking to her, the way he looked at her, those affectionate little pats on the shoulder he would offer her whenever she beat him in a race. When they all gathered beneath his popcorn box at the Royal Raceway for announcements, it was always her occupying the spot at the very front. And so she had been contented in knowing that _he likes me best. I'm special. He's not just my king, but he's my grown-up, too!_

Finding out that her grown-up had been a game-wrecking sham had wounded her deeply, far more deeply than she would ever acknowledge. And finding out that said game-wrecking sham wasn't an adult at all but a fifteen-year-old boy, who was a glitch, _and _had nearly gotten them all killed again, _and_ was being given a second chance for no good reason at all...well, that had been the last straw for her.

She had made no great secret of her disdain for Turbo, and over the past week or so, he had responded in turn with equal nastiness. But to get back at him for both bumping her off the roster more than once and soaking up all of the gamers' attention like a greedy sponge, she would need something more than a sharp-tongue. She consulted Gloyd Orangeboar, the resident master of pranking, interested in one of his tricks involving a soda bottle.

The prank involved a single Mento suspended in the cap of said bottle with a strand of black thread. When the cap was removed, the Mento caused the soda to erupt into the unlucky victim's face. Simple, but effective.

Considering Turbo's history, she was looking forward to the particular effect that it might have on him.

And so, that Saturday, near the end of the work day, Taffyta had Gloyd innocently approach Turbo and ask him if he could please get this bottle open. Thanks to Turbo's memory loss, he didn't know enough about Gloyd to take caution when the pumpkin-headed prankster made any kind of request, no matter how innocuous. She watched, a smirk curling around the lollipop stick jutting from her lips, as Turbo absently lifted the soda bottle into his grasp and gave the lid a twist.

It unscrewed easily, of course, and a jet of pale brown foam had gushed into Turbo's face before he had the chance to question anything.

A normal victim to the prank would have cried out in surprise and dismay, dropped the bottle, and then began gesticulating wildly at the sticky brown stains now splattered across their clothes, but Turbo's reaction was infinitely more rewarding...for Taffyta, anyway. His scream was one of real and utter terror, not just shock. His pupils dilated visibly in his creepy yellow eyes, and he flung the exploding soft drink away from him as if it were an enormous hairy spider before stumbling back wildly. That shrill screech hadn't stopped, and there was a strangled quality to it, almost like it was being extracted from his throat with a pair of pliers. The expression on his face was both distant and horrified; he was somewhere else entirely.

Now it was Taffyta's turn to make her move.

"Aww, what's the mater, _Turbo_?" she questioned coolly as she strode up to him. "Don't tell me you're afraid of a little soda spill! Here, let me give you a hand..." And, taking the opportunity while he was still vacant and mentally compromised, she gave him a hard shove that sent him lurching to the side of the track.

She had crafted this plan long before the player had selected the course for that particular race, so it wasn't really _her _fault that there were syrup puddles lining the road to serve as barriers, was it? Plus, it wasn't as if she'd intentionally tried to make him fall into the gunk. She'd just sort of pushed him in that general direction.

Either way, Turbo went sprawling on his back in the viscous syrup mixture, and that seemed to jolt him out of whatever trance the soda had sent him into. He blinked several times, brow furrowing as he contemplated what the what had just happened to him, and then managed to shift upwards to his elbows. Globs of sticky amber liquid trailed from his sleeves. He stared at her, mouth slightly parted, eyes brimming with a whole host of conflicting emotions that were more or less dominated by shock.

No one was laughing. Several of the day's avatars had witnessed and grouped around the incident – Crumbelina, Swizzle, Candlehead, Adorabeezle – but they were all gazing at Taffyta with expressions very similar to Turbo's. Even Gloyd had clapped both hands over his mouth, not having expected his seemingly harmless prank to take such a dark turn.

Maybe it would have been better if Turbo had started screaming at her, had made some pretense of standing up for himself or "putting her in her place," but he didn't. After another heavy pause, he scrambled to his feet, swatted the clinging syrup from his jumpsuit as best he could, and bolted in the opposite direction. He left a trail of pale brown footprints in his wake as he ran off in the direction of the candy cane forest, but no one tried to follow him. They all briefly watched him go before their eyes swayed back to Taffyta.

About the time that the hand clamped down on her shoulder was when she realized that her plan would have some unexpected repercussions.

"Taffyta!" yelled Vanellope, spinning the strawberry girl to face her. Taffyta yelped as she suddenly found herself confronted with an extremely angry president. In fact, Vanellope was beyond livid, and she jammed her pudgy little finger into Taffyta's chest. "What was that for?!"

"What are you talking about?" Taffyta had blurted out the rebuttal before she had given the words any thought. "I'm not the one who played the joke on him! It was Gloyd!"

"No, but it was your idea, wasn't it?! You planned it that way, didn't you?! I've seen how you've been treating him since he started racing again!" Vanellope's face scrunched up furiously. "Do you really think it's funny to try and give Turbo bad flashbacks?! You knew what would happen! And then pushing him in the mud, too...!"

"He deserves it." Taffyta had the sort of skin that would flush at even the slightest trigger, and her cheeks were certainly flaming up now as her own repressed rage began to simmer. "After everything he did to us, getting pushed in the mud is the least he deserves! Why are you sticking up for him?! He ruined your life for fifteen years!"

Vanellope's eyes widened, and she shouted, "So did you!"

Well, there really wasn't anything Taffyta could say to that, was there?

"He's my friend!" Vanellope continued to rant. "And I've forgiven him for what he did because I know what he's really like, just like I did for you – but apparently I was wrong to forgive you so soon, because you really are just a bully! It's his first week racing with us and he was already paranoid enough about fitting in, the last thing he needs is..._this_! I hope you're happy with yourself. Didn't you learn anything about how to treat people? Or were you just sucking up to me because I'm in charge now?!"

With that, she spun away sharply, storming away from Taffyta and hurrying off to find wherever Turbo had gone.

Realization struck Taffyta's gut with a pang. For the past week she had suspected it, and yet she had brushed her intuition aside, telling herself that it was simply too irrational to be so. But Vanellope's anger, her defensiveness, how quickly she had stepped up to defend her friend even though he was older than her and could handle himself...

Turbo was Vanellope's favorite. Not Taffyta.

Taffyta wasn't a favorite anymore.

The arcade would close in six minutes, and she was glad of it. She spat her lollipop into the dirt and, ignoring the stunned and disgusted expressions aimed at her by her coworkers, she slowly trundled back to her kart.


	4. Ice cream social

_A/N - Yeah, okay, I actually don't like this one. At all. It was written on a whim for Turbo's account on Tumblr (turbo-the-ghost-boy, for those who are interested). However, I figured that since it's been a while, you guys at least deserve to have SOMETHING. I'm just sorry this isn't better._

* * *

It had been a bad idea from the start. Turbo never should have given in to Felix and Vanellope's pressuring. After all, it wasn't _that_ important for him to socialize, was it? Or if he had to start talking to other people besides his newfound surrogate family, he could just stick to the other characters in Sugar Rush, right? Because given his reputation, there was no way that a trip into Game Central Station could end well.

He should have listened to his gut instinct. But he didn't. And so he was hearing those awful words that he was powerless to defend himself from, only now they were dripping with even more poison and contempt than they had thirty years ago:

"Well, if it isn't the ghost boy."

Turbo and Vanellope were at Tapper's by themselves, for the first and last time. The grown-ups had allowed them to go on their own in a sort of "we trust you" gesture. However, after the events that were about to transpire, they would be condemned to adult supervision for a reason that had nothing to do with trust.

For a few minutes, everything had seemed…normal. Well, okay, Turbo's heart was beating like a hummingbird's wings and people kept staring at him in terror and shock, but it was easy to ignore that if he just kept focusing on Vanny's smiling face. _It doesn't matter what they think of you, _he told himself. _Your best friend knows who you really are, and she knows that you're not bad. Just focus on that._

Tapper had also been rather startled, to say the least, but he did a better job of hiding it than anyone else. After the initial exclamation of "Turbo?!" when he realized who exactly he was serving, he took one look at the teen's mortified face and cleared his throat, quickly regaining composure. So far, the only other thing he'd said to Turbo was, "You're a chocolate milkshake kinda guy, if memory serves."

And Turbo did have to admit, he'd missed Tapper's chocolate milkshakes.

It all went wrong at about the time a shadow fell over him, accompanied by a voice leering the nickname that he'd hated for so long.

The guy who'd spoken was burly. Not particularly tall, but a giant compared to a three-foot-ten glitchy weakling. Turbo couldn't have said what game he was from. There was something familiar about him, though…maybe he'd been one of Turbo's hecklers way back when…

Breathing hard, Turbo clenched his fists around his milkshake glass, sparing a glance towards Vanny that hopefully sent the clear message of _let me take care of this_. "I'm not a ghost boy," he contradicted coolly, turning slowly to confront the other sprite.

The burly man scoffed. "Where have I heard this before? But fine, I won't call you a ghost boy. I'll just call you what you are — a traitor, a game-wrecker, and a _murderer_!"

Turbo's blood ran cold, and the fact that everyone in the bar was now staring didn't exactly ease his agitation.

Scowling, Vanellope stood up on her bar stool so quickly that she knocked over her mug of root beer, but Turbo gripped her arm before she had a chance to let that sharp tongue of hers fly. As he did so, the stress of the situation finally penetrated his coding, and he glitched in a burst of red static.

He could have sworn that a muffled gasp rose up from everyone assembled, and perhaps even from the walls and floor and furniture as well.

"You're a glitch?!" exclaimed the burly man incredulously. He blinked, and his expression became a sneer. "You're a glitch. You're a _glitch! _After all this, big bad Turbo is just a weak little ghost glitch!"

Turbo glitched again, miserably and silently. He knew that he should have been defending himself. But how could he?

And then he realized — too late — that Vanellope would never, ever, EVER in a million years stay silent while someone was calling her best friend a glitch.

"Take that back, ya fat-headed pudding lump!" she shrieked, using Turbo's shoulder for balance as she leaned forward. "He isn't a glitch and he isn't a ghost boy! Why don't you just leave him alone, huh?! He didn't do nothin' to you!"

Silence swept across the bar like the ethereal glow of a hard reset.

"…he didn't do nothin' to me?" mimicked the burly man in a tippy tone of voice. "Look, you little brat, this _monster_ right here is a threat to the whole arcade! Really, it'd be a public service to get rid of him and all his supporters!"

Tapper finally found his voice. "That's _enough!_" he cried, but his words were swallowed by a sudden onslaught of shouting. "No fighting in my bar!"

Not even Turbo was listening now. In fact, the boy had gone from stunned and ashamed to livid in a matter of seconds. He would sit there and take verbal insults, and even threats often weren't enough to drive him to action. But threatening Vanellope — _his baby sister?! _He smacked the burly man's hand furiously, as it had crept perilously close to the two children. "You — ! Don't you DARE touch her!"

The man snarled. "Go on, then! Teach me a lesson, TURBO. Even that name is disgusting! It means game-jumping, it means taking what doesn't belong to you, it means EVIL! It means — "

Something incredible happened then. A pair of chalk-white hands wrapped around his neck and squeezed so hard that his eyes bugged out…but the hands didn't belong to Turbo.

"And what's so great 'bout you, huh?!" snarled a new voice, one that was so familiar that it sent Turbo reeling against the edge of the bar. "No one insults my main racer! No matter what he did, he's still a million times better than you!"

"_Set! What do you think you're doing?!"_

"What does it look like I'm doin'?! I'm steppin' up for Turbo, as usual!"

"_Set, just stop it! Stop picking fights! It doesn't matter anymore, Turbo's gone!"_

"He ain't gone, Jet! He's sittin' right in front of this yahoo!"

"…_what?!_"

"I mean it! Come see for yerself!"

By this point, Tapper had hurried around the bar to free the now-gasping burly man from his attacker. A small, blue-clad form tumbled to the ground, landing hard on his knees, but showing no signs of pain. He flashed yellow teeth up at the bartender as he shooed away the patrons that had gathered to watch the fight, before escorting his rowdy customer away.

A second, fundamentally identical blue figure scrambled up to help his twin —his _literal twin_ — to his feet. "I'm so sorry! Really! Please excuse my brother, he's just got such a temper, he's…"

Yellow eyes aligned with yellow eyes, and Turbo couldn't stop staring.

"Uhhh…Turbo?" Vanellope tugged on his sleeve, vying for attention that he didn't have the capacity to give her. "Aren't those your…"

_Challengers? NPCs? Friends who I abandoned because I was a stupid, selfish, snot-nosed little kid? Sure looks like them. But it can't be, because they're dead! I killed them…!_

"Jet? Set?" he piped up in a tiny voice.

The two brothers exchanged a glance. They looked at Turbo. Then at each other again. Then back at Turbo. Then…

In an instant, Jet's arm were wrapped around Turbo's neck in a crushingly tight hug. "_Turbo!_"

"I…" All the coherent thoughts escaped Turbo's mind in a long rush. Why were they alive? Why weren't they mad?! Why was Jet hugging him, and why did he now feel Set's hands clenching around his shoulders from behind…?!

"You're alive! _You're alive!_" Set was actually laughing with relief and joy, and his laughter was a rare-enough sound as it was. "I knew it! I knew the rumors were true! I knew you weren't gone!"

"Wh…I'm alive?! I'm not the one who's s'posed to be dead!" And now Turbo was laughing too. It was an odd, involuntary, almost strangled-sounding laugh, but there was still such wondermen in it. He didn't even notice the dampness around his eyes and on his cheeks. "Y-you guys are…but I thought…how are you…?!"

It was a while before the three of them stopped laughing and crying together, swept up in the rush of just seeing one another again after so much time had passed. The initial rush of emotion was so strong that when it had gone, and Jet and Set had pulled up a couple of barstools right alongside him and Vanellope, he had no idea what to say next. There were so many explanations that had to be given, so many apologies he owed… "Where do I even start?" he murmured to himself.

Set pointed to Turbo's long-forgotten milkshake, while Jet still beamed at Turbo and wiped away tears. "You can start by gettin' us some ice cream," declared the cruder twin. "After all, it's the least you can do, amirite? You owe us!"

"Yeah…I guess I do." Turbo smiled, gazing downward as he plunged a hand into his pocket. "Hey, Tapper! I need two more chocolate shakes over here!"

Granted, he owed his twins a lot more than ice cream, but it was a start.


	5. The mirror

_A/N - Ugggggghhhh. I have been so incredibly uninspired to write for such a long time, and as a result, I've disappointed all of you guys. I'm so sorry! If you haven't already, come find me on Tumblr as turbo-the-ghost-boy and hit me up for a roleplay or something - I'm there all the time. Now, on to the writing updates:_

_**Ghost King will be updated by Friday. I'd also like to update If It Ain't Broke sometime in the near future (with amendments to the two previously written**  
_

_..._

_The mirror_  
...

"_Help! Help me!"_

King Candy rubbed his eyes as a tiny little voice dragged him from his slumber. At first, he didn't hear the words as much as the annoying shrill tone. _Who dares interrupt the King of Sugar Rush while he's sleeping?! Sour Bill, that had better not be you!_

His first cursory scan of the room revealed no one, but his royal bedchambers were huge – the largest in the whole castle, in fact. Someone could easily be hiding in the shadows. Or stuck there, by the sound of things...

"_Help me! Help me!_"

Couldn't be Sour Bill. The voice was too high-pitched, too childlike. One of the Sugar Rush racers, perhaps? If so, then King Candy's bet was on Gloyd Orangeboar, who seemed the most likely culprit when it came to sneaking in and getting trapped in a tiny space where you weren't meant to be.

"_Help me!_"

"All right, I'm coming," grumbled the king softly, swinging his feet over the side of the plush pink bed and nudging on his slippers. "Keep your pantsth on, hoo." He hated being caught in just his nightshirt and cap – it wasn't very kingly, of course, but if he didn't attend to this now, he would surely get no sleep tonight. "Where _are_ you, anywaysth? I can't thsee you – "

"_Help!"_

And suddenly, without a doubt, King Candy knew that the voice was coming from his mirror.

The king was privately considered by his subjects to be a trifle narcissistic. He bragged about his victories at every opportunity, often threw lavish celebrations of himself for no reason other than that he existed, and seemed more often than not to be wrapped up in his own little world. But if there was one egomaniacal behavior that he avoided on principle, it was gazing at himself in mirrors. As strange as it was, he seemed to have an aversion to his own reflection. So he kept the looking-glass in his bedchambers covered with a swatch of dark red velvet. (Red velvet, of course, because he lived in a game full of sweets and there's a kind of cake called – no? Harumph.)

Mirrors showed you who you were. They made King Candy uncomfortable, on a subconscious level, because he didn't know who he was...not really. Not anymore.

Numbness swept over him, and the lingering darkness seemed to enfold most of the room, until the only objects he could see were his bed, the mirror, and the path between them. Knowing on some level that this was a dream, and yet powerless to stop himself, the king shuffled forward.

"_Help me! Help!"_

His hand reached out and snatched the fabric drape away from the mirror.

The room behind him was reflected in the glass, just as it should have been...but his own image was not present. Instead, occupying the spot where he should have been was a boy. White skin, white clothes, huge and pleading yellow eyes set in dark hollows. It was easy to make out the capital letter T emblazoned in red across his helmet.

"Help me!" the boy cried again. The glow from his luminescent eyes cast strange shadows about his face, and his palms were pressed flat against the opposite side of the mirror, as if pushing hard enough would release him from his glass prison.

King Candy felt a chill in his veins.

"_Impossible_," he hissed, not bothering to question where his lisp had suddenly gone. "You...you're gone. You're gone! I got rid of you myself!"

The boy stopped his futile escape attempt and gazed at King Candy with an expression of utter betrayal. "How could you do this?!"

As King Candy often assured himself and others, the hardest part of being in a position of power was _doing what's right, no matter what_. Sometimes, doing what was right had surprisingly nasty consequences, leading to unpleasant things that no one wanted to think about. But that was all right; the king had disposed of his conscience a long time ago, around the time that he'd realized how his fate of moping around in Game Central Station could be changed by just pulling a few strings, and using the talents that he'd had from the start...

It was easy to justify all of that to himself, but somehow incredibly hard to justify it with who he'd once been.

"I don't have to explain myself to you," he growled, turning away. Yet his limbs felt heavy and stiff, and his eyes kept getting dragged back towards the mirror.

The boy's expression didn't change. "But you're hurting people!"

"_I'm_ hurting people?!" King Candy barked out a strangled laugh. "You're a fine one to talk! Haven't you ever heard of _going Turbo_? You, boy, are a murderer!"

"B-but..." spluttered the boy, Turbo, guilt flickering through his lemon-colored eyes. "I never meant to do that! And you – "

"_I _never killed anyone, hoo!" King Candy made this sound as if it were something extremely difficult to achieve. "Just put a little _glitch_ in her place, and earned myself the treatment I deserved! And do you know what that means? It means, ahoo, that I'm _better than you_!"

That seemed to shut the little brat up, so King Candy pivoted on his heels dramatically, his back facing in the direction of his former self. He'd had enough of this mirror business for one night. "It'th like I alwayth thaid," he grumbled. Oh, good, his lisp had returned; he was slipping back into his mask now, which meant that reality was returning. "You're jutht a kid!"

He couldn't see the looking-glass, and yet somehow, he could sense Turbo's face twisting with fury. "No, I'm not."

"Ahoo, _yeth_, you _are_!"

"No I'm not! _You_ are!"

And as soon as he said it, King Candy's entire perspective turned inside-out. A choked gasp burbled from his throat, and he doubled over, clutching his head – only to find his fingers grasping at a smooth plastic hemet, instead of gray hair tufts ringing bald skin...

He looked down at himself to see that he truly was _himself_ again, stuffed without warning back into his chunky 8-bit body, his white complexion, his ghost boy face. He was no longer a king. He was a _child, _as he'd so condescendingly told his reflection, _just a kid_. But if he was Turbo, then that meant that his reflection would now be...

He spun back to the mirror and yelped with terror.

The figure facing him wasn't King Candy, not really. It seemed to be a dozen different characters and creatures at once, melded and fused together with lumps of glitching pixels, sprouting tentacles and shriveled heads and too many limbs, all wrapped up and just barely contained within the skin of a saccharine old king. The old man had wild eyes and very sharp teeth, both of which were acid green. He leered, reaching through the glass of the mirror with fingers that were far too sharp.

"_**Do you see what you've become, Turbo?!**_"

Mercifully, the dream ended there.

Sour Bill had just parted the blackout curtains, and King Candy's bedchambers were bathed in cheerful Sugar Rush sunlight, the same as every morning. The sour attendant himself was nowhere to be found, and the king was grateful for it. He was trembling visibly, his skin beaded with cold sweat droplets, and for a second he could have sworn that sickly-colored static was sputtering against his torso, as if a dark shape was retreating into his chest...

But no. That was just ridiculous. He was a perfectly solid and healthy character; the only person who glitched around here was, well, the glitch.

Malware is a funny thing. It weaves its way into your mind, subtly changing who you are a bit at a time, becoming so much a part of you that you never even know it's there. So King Candy didn't realize that he'd been infected when it happened, and so many years later, he still didn't understand that he wasn't alone in his head, that the separation from his true self was becoming more and more pronounced every day. Still, there were some introspective moments, such as this morning, when he couldn't help but notice just how radically _different_ he was now, and wonder how exactly that had happened...

But when he lifted his head and saw that the mirror was still hidden from sight beneath its red velvet drape, he felt reassured. It was time to get up, make himself look presentable, and go out and win a few races like the greatest racer ever that he was.

He had to peek at his reflection, though...just to be sure.

And he lifted a corner of the fabric, and the face that he saw was exactly the one that he'd expected to see.

"You're looking rather pale, old friend, hoo-hoo," he murmured to himself, gently dragging a hand across his gaunt cheek. "In fact, one might even thay _ghothtly._"


End file.
